This invention relates generally to motor vehicle hinges and, more particularly, to a three piece lateral take-apart hinge assembly suitable for easily mounting a vehicle door enabling ready removal and precise remounting of the door as, for example, during a vehicle assembly line operation.
The U.S. Pat. No. 4,720,895 issued Jan. 26, 1988 to Russell H. Peeples entitled Quick-Disconnect Door Hinge discloses a door hinge assembly enabling the vehicle doors to be quickly removed and reassembled during the assembly advancement of the vehicle body. The Peeples hinge body half comprises a main member and a U-shaped extension member. The main member includes a flat mounting plate portion and a channel shaped angled portion bent outwardly from the plate portion. The U-shaped extension member has a planar base portion provided with right angled side flanges defining a pair of parallel legs each terminating in a hinge knuckle. The main member angled portion is sized for snug nested reception of the U-shaped extension member. An aperture is provided in the extension member base wall aligned with an aperture in the main member channel shaped portion bight wall. Upon tightening a threaded bolt in the aligned apertures the juxtaposed surfaces of the members are adapted for mutual clamped abutment preventing both separation and relative rotation thereof.
The U.S. Pat. No. 4,766,643 issued Aug. 30, 1988 to Sumorfin Salazar entitled Vehicle Door Hinge Having Vertically Separable Pivotal Connections. The Salazar patent discloses a lift-off vehicle door hinge mounting arrangement for a vehicle door in which one of two vertically spaced hinges is the type that permits separation of the part connected to the vehicle body from the type connected to the door through lifting one with respect to the other. In one form of the Salazar patent a modified hinge body mounting plate has an apertured upstruck abutment tab aligned with an aperture in a door mounting plate. A shank portion of a plastic push pin is snugly received in the aligned apertures.
It is an object of the present invention to provide upper and lower three-piece door hinge assemblies enabling a vehicle door and its upper and lower door-half hinge sub-assemblies to be readily removed and re-mounted in a lateral manner while insuring an exact fit of the re-mounted door with the vehicle body.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a three-piece door hinge assembly as set forth above wherein the door-half hinge sub-assembly comprises a door-half hinge bracket, adapted to be fixedly attached to the door, and a link plate pivotally connected to the door-half mounting bracket wherein the link plate is readily pivoted to a preset door partially open position where it abuts a locating push-pin temporarily inserted in the hinge bracket prior to door removal.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a three-piece door hinge assembly as set forth above wherein the locating push-pin establishes a predetermined door open position between the link plate and the door-half bracket creating a wedge-shaped receptacle, formed by cooperation of a vertical link plate surface angularly oriented relative to a vertical surface of the bracket, which receptacle is open toward the body-mounting hinge and adapted to slidably receive therein a complementary body-half hinge wedge-like foot plate in a lead-in nested manner.
It is a still further object of the present invention to provide a three-piece door hinge assembly as set forth above wherein the wedge-like foot plate and the door-half sub-assembly wedge-shaped receptacle have abutting stop portions. A pair of threaded holes in the foot plate are thereby automatically aligned with associated apertures in the link plate for the ready reception and tightening of take-apart screws by an assembly line operator. Thus, the link plate and foot plate are positively clamped together insuring parallelism of the door-half hinge subassembly with the body-half hinge.